#3. Black & Trans Warfare, Virginia Style
Race-and-gender attacks didn't move swing voters to Glenn Youngkin, but they succeeded in activating the beast within the GOP base. There is a lesson here for Democrats.
[This is an updated post]
Critical Race Theory & Transgender Wars
Republican strategists are promoting Glenn Youngkin’s recent winning gubernatorial campaign in Virginia as a template for the upcoming Congressional midterms this November.
They view Youngkin’s success in triangulating between middle-of-the-road suburbanites and rabid Trumpists as somehow translatable to purplish US House and Senate campaigns. But there’s more going on here than meets the eye, and neither Youngkin nor his candidacy are likely to be successfully emulated elsewhere in 2022.
First, however, allow me a diversion. I promise to circle back to the alleged Youngkin Effect, but what really grabbed my attention in Virginia, and continues to have me stewing, are two specific below-the-belt, culture-war explosions that detonated in the run-up to Election Day in the Commonwealth.
Bottom line: Both sets of fireworks fizzled … and that has important implications for Democrats in this critical year for democracy.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY: WTF HAPPENED?
There is nothing new about critical race theory, of course; it was developed in the 1970s by some of the country’s leading African-American legal scholars, academics and activists. Nor are these marginal concepts. It’s no exaggeration to say that similar intellectual constructs undergird an entire constellation of civil rights litigation, legislation and governance that has advanced in the five decades since.1
Cut to now. After 50 years slumbering in academic obscurity, the phrase “CRT” suddenly bursts into view as the right’s preferred new shorthand for racism. What happened? It apparently started less than two years ago and reached a crescendo during the Virginia campaign.
Journalist Benjamin Wallace-Wells provides an excellent look in The New Yorker at the 18-month deployment cycle that birthed “War on CRT” as a political issue, from its inception by a lone right-wing activist; to Tucker Carlson, Mark Meadows and eventually Trump himself; to an executive order targeting federal diversity trainings and a spate of copycat laws in GOP states; and, finally, to the Youngkin gubernatorial campaign this past summer and fall, providing the first real opportunity in the country to test the issue’s actual electoral appeal.
The candidate himself went all-in, pledging repeatedly to “ban critical race theory on Day One.” Youngkin also proposed, at a series of “Parents Matter” campaign events around the state, that public school students in Virginia should learn the whitewashed “Project 1776” curriculum championed by Donald Trump.2
Finally, a week before Election Day, Youngkin released a blistering attack ad against his opponent Terry McAuliffe, resurrecting an old battle over the teaching of Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” in Virginia schools. [Thus hitting both the race and gender hot buttons with one shot!]
But let me repeat, the bottom line is that it didn’t really work. Youngkin did win, yet it’s pretty clear from the data (stay tuned for details) that neither racebaiting nor genderbashing carried the day.
One last point: It’s a good thing I’m not teaching one of those non-existent high school classes devoted to Critical Race Theory. I’d be fired in a heartbeat. I’d ask my students one simple question: Why does the skin color of African Americans range across an entire gamut of darker hues? And the answer is - wait for it - several centuries of mass rape of enslaved Black women by White overseers and slaveowners, including some of our founding fathers.
We won’t be truly free until most of us, at least, can hold that truth to be self-evident, just as so many Germans today have been taught to fully appreciate the horrors buried in their past.
TRANSGENDER WARS: THE TOILET GRIFT
Simply tampering with men’s and women’s traditional sex roles tends to trigger a potent backlash, particularly among men, out on the farther reaches of the Republican right.
But actually questioning the nature of gender identity itself? That brings out a whole new level of crazy. The sheer existence of transexuality as a phenomenon seems to make MAGA heads explode. Whether dudes or dads, it’s apparently too direct an affront to their own fragile masculinities.
Vilifying transexuals and indeed bashing all sexual minorities isn’t just considered sport by Team Insurgency. It has been emerging as a favorite below-the-belt campaign tactic since before Donald Trump’s election.
To recap: In 2016, after the city of Charlotte, North Carolina passed an ordinance allowing transgender people to use restrooms according to their own gender identity, the State of North Carolina enacted superseding legislation declaring that people may only use public toilets matching the gender listed on their birth certificates. Other Red states soon followed suit.
Later that year, in the final months of his administration, President Barack Obama issued a federal directive to all publicly-funded schools in the US, effectively reinstating the Charlotte rule and making it national in scope. Since then, more than a dozen GOP-controlled states have sued in Federal courts to overturn this decision. They want to enforce their damn toilet laws.
Here in Virginia, and once again during the peak of the Youngkin campaign — can you imagine that? — high school toilets suddenly became a viral sensation and a national news story, thanks to the Great Loudoun County Tranny Toilet Fraud.
If attacks on Critical Race Theory can at least be said to have a flimsy connection to reality, the same cannot be said for the alleged transgender rape of a female high school student at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia, in the affluent outer suburbs of Washington DC.
Loudoun and neighboring Fairfax counties were ground zero in the GOP campaign for Youngkin, home to tens of thousands of suburban moms who deserted Donald Trump en masse for Joe Biden in 2020, and whom Youngkin needed to win back.
Only after the dust had settled on Youngkin’s win did the full story emerge. The alleged transexual boy-in-a-skirt rapist turned out to be the victim’s boyfriend. They previously had consensual sexual encounters in that very school bathroom, which she had picked out as a location for their tryst.
By that time the damage was done. There were even calls for the entire Loudoun school board to resign. “You are so concerned with pushing race and gender that you sacrificed our children,” Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County GOP Women’s Club, accused board members.
What’s doubly obscene about the accusation of transexual predators in high school bathrooms is not just that it’s totally false, a damnable lie, a forgery, but it’s actually the reverse that is tragically, literally true.
Those good, middle-class Christian Trumpists suffer nothing.
BLACK AND TRANS, R.I.P.
It is trans youth themselves who are being condemned by the thousand, thrown out of their homes by judgmental, Fundamentalist-inspired parents, far too often winding up on the streets of America’s larger cities, selling their bodies for survival and subject to predation, assault, addiction … and murder.
Of course, violence against trans people is happening across the board, but it hits one community harder than any other. According to a 2018 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 80 percent of all gender-nonconforming murder victims in the United States were transgender people of color; 70 percent were black transwomen.3
Walking through Dupont Circle in 2019, I happened across the aftermath of a protest and memorial ceremony making just this point. The memorial’s attendees had left behind a startling emotional tableau. Red roses were scattered around the central fountain, along with paper plaques bearing the names and death dates of murdered Black transwomen from across the United States.
Two recent DC victims were literally being mourned that day by family and friends. Ashanti Carmon, 27, a homeless transgender sex worker, had been killed in March 2019. Zoe Spears, 23, was shot to death in the same DC neighborhood three months later by a different killer. The two women were friends.
Whether it’s Critical Race Theory or Transgender Warfare, it seems the twin evils of racism and gender violence are often intertwined. That’s one reason the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund has just filed an amicus brief with the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals in the case of a transgender Florida student challenging that state’s school bathroom law. Good for them.
BACK TO THE ALLEGED “YOUNGKIN EFFECT”
I said earlier that contrary to GOP hopes, Glenn Youngkin’s victorious Virginia campaign is unlikely to be successfully replicated in the next election.
In the first place, Youngkin the candidate was sui generis. He is quite literally a candidate of, by and for the one percent — the former chief executive of the Carlyle Group, for Chrissake4 — a global wheeler dealer at the pinnacle of the private equity markets and an intimate of international corporate financiers. His wealth is such that he was willing to forfeit more than $100 million in accrued stock options to retire early and turn his attention to elected high office.
Other Carlyle partners have included former president George H.W. Bush, former British prime minister John Major and former secretary of state James Baker III. The firm’s clients at the time, just in the Middle East, included the Saudi royal family, Saddam Hussein’s family and even Osama bin Laden's half-brother, who was actually attending a Carlyle event in Washington on 9/11 and had to be quietly spirited out of the country — despite all US air traffic being grounded — allegedly via special dispensation from President Bush 43 himself.
In terms of personality, Glenn Youngkin is no Gordon Gekko. He’s blue blood, smooth as silk, understated, soothing and reasonable. In addition to his ruling-class pedigree, indeed because of it, candidate Youngkin also had an excellent, you might even say a special relationship with Donald Trump.
The two men apparently made a deal to be mutually supportive from a distance. In a first for The Donald, Trump endorsed Youngkin and then noticeably stayed the hell out of the way. Unlike other candidates who were beneficiaries of 45’s love, Youngkin alone was empowered to do the Trump Two-Step, embracing and avoiding Orange Satan as circumstances dictated.
My personal belief is that Trump, who regularly spoke with Youngkin during the campaign, was dazzled and coddled into staying quiet by a true master of the deal. You have to question whether any of the current crop of 2022 House and Senate hopefuls have what it takes to keep The Donald on a short leash where his presence will be inconvenient.
Finally, it should also come as no surprise that Youngkin — an enormously successful manager of corporate deals on behalf of the world’s richest men and institutions — was able to recruit, manage and execute an extremely effective, sophisticated campaign on his own behalf. They treaded lightly where needed, played the Donald card where appropriate, and relentlessly pounded with artillery when required. It was a near-flawless display.5
WHAT IT ALL MEANS
The bad news: There’s not much we can do about underhanded and fraudulent political attacks based on race and gender. They are immune to facts, and the people propagating them are utterly shameless.
The good news: These offensive campaign tactics in Virginia turned out to be marginal at best in changing voters’ minds, contrary to much of the immediate post-election media commentary.6 Voters who really care about these issues were already committed Trump supporters.
If it persuades a few white suburban moms on the fringes, then so much the better for the GOP, but at this point, the real purpose of the race and culture uprisings is to keep throwing red meat to the base the Bannonites built. Their White supremacist and fundamentalist Christian advance brigades need to be kept perpetually alienated, angry, and motivated, if you want them on call when and where they’re needed.
In other words, and of course every district is different and your mileage may vary, but generally speaking, the data seem to be saying that Democrats pay an insignificant additional political cost for being progressive on race and gender issues. What’s more, the energy, commitment and passion of our own activated base will more than compensate. Doing the right thing in this case also happens to be the smart thing.
Don’t chase these particular Republican rabbits.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE: THE LAY OF THE LAND
We are not living in a state of emergency. Really. Happy New Year! But there is plenty cause for concern and plenty need for action.
We have less than a year to right this ship. If Democrats lose control of the Senate a year from now, the final two years of the Biden Administration are going to be a real shit show. Forget about the House. We are going to lose the House. The only question is by how much, and of course, we still need to fight tooth and nail everywhere to keep those losses to a bare minimum.
But we absolutely can prevail in the Senate. According to the latest SwingLeft predictions, 28 of the 34 seats up next year essentially belong to the party now holding them. There are just six states in play; Democrats need to win at least half of them to preserve the current 50/50 status quo, with VP Kamala Harris as tiebreaker.
Of those six states, three feature Democrats at risk of losing their seats. These must be defended:
Arizona, where first-term Senator Mark Kelly, former astronaut and the husband of former Senator Gabby Giffords, is running for a full six-year term.
Georgia, where new Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock eked out a victory last year in a special election and must now defend that seat again.
Nevada, where Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto is running for re-election and seeking a second term.
Three other states are considered flippable:
North Carolina, an open seat thanks to Republican Richard Burr’s retirement. The Democratic nominee will be chosen in a May 17 primary.
Pennsylvania, where Republican Pat Toomey’s retirement offers a great opportunity to pick up a seat. That nominee with also be chosen May 17.
Wisconsin, where the vulnerable and villainous Republican Ron Johnson is seeking re-election in a state Biden won. The primary isn’t until August 9.
Here is an idea if you really, really want to do something positive and concrete: Adopt one of these states! Don’t ignore your own backyard, but plan your summer vacation in one of these essential swing states and donate some vacay days to the Democratic Senate candidate. They will gladly put you to work. Even if you can’t do that, you can absolutely phone bank and write letters remotely across state lines. Volunteer! 7
A NEW YEARS WISHLIST FOR MY FRIENDS
For advocates of direct action:
Make an explicit commitment to nonviolence
Avoid incendiary language unless it is your intention to incite
Try not to give the other side cheap, effective ammunition with which to attack you
Be wary of agitation. People are already agitated.
Be metaphorically and substantively in the other side’s face, but hopefully not physically
And here’s something for my establishment Democratic politician friends:
FINALLY, A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT WOKE FUNDAMENTALISM8
Living in a woke state, both politically and spiritually, is something I aspire to (and consistently fail at).
Being truly woke to me means being fully conscious, alive and aware. The very idea of oppressing a fellow human being from such a place is unthinkable, since the essence of enlightenment is, as they say, compassion for all living things.
Yet even the most enlightened visions have a tendency in human hands to calcify, turn into doctrine, or harden into dogma. And so it gives me no pleasure to note the symptoms of a woke fundamentalism that have taken root on our side.
I’m talking about hierarchical categories of virtue and sin… specific nomenclature that must be respected … a demand for conformity … a crime of apostasy… the casting out of those who violate taboos … and low to zero tolerance for deviations.
On the other hand, moderate Democrats parroting right-wing talking points is equally ugly, if not more so. Let me say it yet again: If our Democratic base voters are not energized and activated, we lose! End of story. Have a happy and healthy 2022!
NOTES
For more background on Critical Race Theory check out the excellent primer Critical Race Theory and Education: History, Theory, and Implications. Full disclosure: the development of critical race theory is closely associated with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which I was proud to serve as a media consultant on several unrelated issues.
See Scientific American: The Anti–Critical Race Theory Movement Will Profoundly Affect Public Education for a deeper look at the implications of the current anti-CRT initiatives.
Transwoman refers to a person making an actual physical male-to-female bodily transition, also referred to as mtf. This can be a partial or full transition, involving some combination of therapy, hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery.
For the full tawdry tale, see Inside Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s long career at Carlyle, an enlightening and comprehensive account by Washington Post reporter Gregory S. Schneider.
Youngkin also benefited from the tired campaign mounted by his weak opponent, former Governor Terry McAuliffe, as I noted in my previous post, Infrastructure & Insurrection.
See VA polls suggest parental backlash didn’t swing the election by Washington Post Polling Editor Scott Clement and Did critical race theory really swing the Virginia election? by Zack Beauchamp in Vox.
h/t to my friends Ayelet and Jon, who do this every election cycle (and try to lasso their friends)
For a prescient view of the woke political wars, see Perry Bacon Jr.’s Why Attacking Cancel Culture’ And ‘Woke’ People Is Becoming The GOP’s New Political Strategy, which appeared last March in 538.com.
Great!